Publisher's Weekly Review
Sereny, a London journalist, ``found a great deal to like'' in former Nazi Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and minister of armaments and war production, whom she interviewed extensively between 1978 and his death in 1981. This long, strained portrait too often reads like an apologia and too often takes Speer's calculated, self-serving evaluations at face value. Convicted at Nuremberg for his use of slave labor, Speer spent 20 years in Spandau prison and wrote two bestselling memoirs voicing his repentance. Sereny unconvincingly argues that by 1941, Speer knew Jews were being deported but had no idea they were going to their deaths, nor any idea of Hitler's plans to exterminate European Jewry. By late 1943, however, she believes, Speer was aware of the almost-completed genocide even though he continued to work for Hitler, for whom he had an ``unspoken love.'' Interviews with Speer's family and associates and with former Nazi officials, plus eight years of archival research, supplement this overblown account. Photos. 50,000 first printing; History Book Club main selection; BOMC alternate. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A monumental attempt to pierce the facade of lies, deceit, evasions, and half-truths erected by Hitler's favorite architect and minister of armaments and war production in the Third Reich. Sereny (The Invisible Children, 1985, etc.) here continues a project that began with Into That Darkness, her work on Franz Stangl, commandant of Treblinka, trying to explain the capacity of men to commit horrendous crimes. Speer, who died in 1981, evolves as a much more human and complex character than the stereotypical Nazi, although he is no less a grotesque and in some ways even more frightening. At the heart of the work are years of personal interviews with her subject, who was released from prison in 1966; the interviews are compelling not just in what they reveal about Speer, but in how Sereny responds to him. Behind ""those dark intelligent eyes,"" she felt, lay ""a real literary talent""; yet it was a first-rate mind that masked the absence of a soul. Speer claimed to have no knowledge of the mass exterminations taking place in Eastern Europe, insisting to the end that he found out about the camps only at his trial in Nuremburg. Yet here was a master of detail and a genius of organization; how could the immense effort to exterminate the Jews have possibly escaped his attention? Sereny, to her credit, does not impose her judgment until the end, where she argues that Speer was living a ""Great Lie""; morally blind to the evil of the Nazis, unable to comprehend or acknowledge his love of the Fuehrer (a love that was not without its erotic aspect), and fully aware of the murder of the Jews, Speer somehow managed to convince himself that he knew nothing. More than a biography or an attempt to prove guilt, this is a struggle to understand how evil seduced a modern Faust. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In the mid-1970s, Sereny and Lewis Chester refuted David Irving's revisionist Hitler's War, and Albert Speer--then out of prison for a decade--wrote Sereny gratefully. His letter opened a relationship that continued until Speer's death in 1981 and led to years of research--all of which bear fruit in this penetrating, powerful study of a complex, puzzling man. Sereny fully documents the facts: Speer's lonely childhood and education; the stages in his involvement with Nazism and its charismatic leader; his work as the fuhrer's architect and, from 1942, as reichsminister responsible for arms production and then all production; his obstruction of Hitler's 1945 "scorched earth" orders; his interrogation by the Allies, testimony at Nuremberg, and 20 years in prison; and his anomalous place in West Germany after his 1966 release. But Sereny's objective is to understand Speer: his unique personal relationship with Hitler; his illness in early 1944, which Sereny links to his recognition of Nazi crimes; his ambivalent behavior late in the war; the mixture of conscience and cunning in his acceptance of general responsibility at Nuremberg; and Speer's work at Spandau "to become a different man," work Sereny views as an authentic effort to confront the extent of his guilt for the Holocaust, but an effort this cool, far-from-introspective man was able to sustain only fitfully (and with the help of spiritual advisers) over the remaining 30 years of his life. With Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis raising clouds of dust around the world, Sereny's masterful search for truth is an essential acquisition. (Reviewed August 1995)0394529154Mary Carroll
Choice Review
Using extensive interviews with Speer, his wife, and dozens of acquaintances, as well as Speer's private letters from his youth onward, Sereny examines her subject's life in miniscule detail as she tries to answer the questions, What did he know? When did he know it? And why did he loyally serve Hitler? Speer's recollections suggest that in the matter of the Final Solution his conscience had been anesthetized as a result of his nonsexual but homoerotic loyalty to Hitler. In Spandau and later, Speer then struggled to accept responsibility and to discern the rationale for his actions. Sereny's interviews lay bare Speer's struggle in confronting how he could initially construct a void in his moral consciousness during the traumatic war years despite the fact that by 1943 he had certain knowledge of Hitler's plan to exterminate the Jews. Helped by these reflections and assisted by Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish clergy, Speer, after his Spandau confinement, was able to engage his developing conscience with his unmanageable guilt and to emerge by the time of his death with the moral values that he cherished before 1933. General readers; undergraduates; graduate students. D. J. Dietrich; Boston College
Library Journal Review
At one time, Albert Speer was the closest man to Adolf Hitler. Unlike other war criminals, Speer seemed to accept blame for his actions and felt the Nazi leadership should take responsibility for Hitler's crimes, not the German people. Sentenced to 20 years in Spandau prison, he was released in 1966 and died in 1981. Speer's writings and diaries (e.g., Infiltration, LJ 6/15/81) have become standard sources. Sereny repeats a method she used successfully in Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience (Vintage, 1983), which dealt with the Treblinka concentration camp commander Franz Stangel. That is, she conducted intensive and protracted interviews with Speer ("I grew to like [him]") and many of the people who were close to him. Along with the interviews and analysis are good descriptions of what was happening in Germany throughout the Third Reich. Sereny's clear and concise prose makes this book suitable for both the scholar and the lay reader. She has produced what will become one of the standard works in Holocaust studies. For all libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/95.]Dennis L. Noble, Sequim, Wash. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
